Mita pardo de tavera biography of barack

This blogger's seemingly endless cleaning of hard and soft files revealed this article I wrote in June 2005 for a magazine. I never got a copy of that issue and often wondered if the piece, an assignment, was ever used.All par for the course in the journalism game.

What I remember though of that morning spent with Dr. Mita Pardo de Tavera was how ageless she seemed. It must have been from the enthusiasm she exuded. She introduced me to a lean household staff, including a seamstress who sewed Pardo de Tavera's clothes, curtains, etc. She showed photos of how she looked as a young woman, saying, "I was morena, not mestiza. People think I'm mestiza because I  let my hair grow white."

By some serendipitous happenstance (what a pretentious phrase, that one!), an old pal recently emailed me her memory of Dr. Pardo de Tavera in the context of the woman doctor's participation  in the events leading to and after the People Power Revolt. And now, a few hours before Sunday breakfast, she  appears in my old e-mail files that I am drastically trimming down.

Thank you, Doc Mita, for all the still-relevant reminders on how medical practice ought to be, where government priorities should lie and how the Christ in Christianity is found not in churches but in fields